


Counting Thoughts

by Linnrinn



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: F/F, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 10:42:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29774973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linnrinn/pseuds/Linnrinn
Summary: Baking baklava, flour wars and Quynh's thoughts about her time in the coffin. It's the thought that counts.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Kudos: 35





	Counting Thoughts

**Author's Note:**

> this probably takes place in my timeline where Booker has just recently left on his walkabout.
> 
> just a quick sketch of a story in my mind, so it may be a little raw...(lol future pun intended.)

Nicky walked into the kitchen of their Benoni safe house in South Africa and almost walked right back out. The kitchen was an unholy mess. Flour, decimated nuts and a plethora of open jars and containers littered every open space. How there was a trail of honey on the ceiling and down one window was anyone’s guess. A charred scent filled the air even as he blinked back a hazy tinge of smoke from his vision. Amidst the mayhem, Quynh stood at the island, frowning down at a pan in suspicious disapproval.

“Quynh? What are you doing?” Nicky hesitated to even ask, but he did so for the sake of the kitchen’s survival.

The young woman did not look up from the pan she was studying. “Baking.”

“Baking?”

“Baklava.”

Nicky nodded. “Ah. For Andy’s birthday.”

Quynh nodded absently. “I had Nile distract Andy with some excuse about her ‘internship’ hours together. Try this.” She shoved a piece of the concoction aggressively at his mouth, which Nicky dodged skittishly.

“Quynh, uh, you know I love you but…you cannot bake. Or cook. At all.”

Quynh frowned, still holding out the piece expectantly. “I can…a little…”

“Putting frosting on cake or pouring milk into cereal doesn’t count, sorella.” He said the words gently, reluctant to hurt her feelings. Still, Quynh frowned and her shoulders wilted in defeat.

“I do not know what went wrong. I read the recipe! It’s burnt towards the outside and not cooked on the inside,” Quynh wailed.

Her baking lament was interrupted when the faint burning smell he’d sensed earlier became a singed char. Quynh swore with a word she’d no doubt learned from Nile, and removed another pan that was smoking in areas and lines of thin embers that indicated it was close to catching fire. Immediately, she dropped it into the sink and ran water over it to extinguish the flaming bits. Staring down at the now water logged, blackened attempt, she let out a pitiful sigh.

“Ugh, I thought I could do it right this time! Now what else am I supposed to give to a woman who quite contented to only own an axe and nothing else?!”

She looked so forlorn that Nicky sighed and rolled up his sleeves. “Alright, sorella. Let’s try it again.”

Quynh perked up immediately. “You will help me?”

Nicky nodded, moving to her side to begin measuring flour, water, vinegar, salt and oil to make the phyllo dough. He glanced at the recipe for the occasional reminder, but he’d made their leader’s favorite treat many times throughout the centuries. With patience, he laid the ball of dough over the floured countertop and placed his hands over Quynh’s. Gently, he moved her hands over the dough, showing her how to knead it properly.

“You know that Andy would have loved just being with you for her birthday, as much as any gift if not more.”

Quynh sighed. “Yes. But it’s been centuries since I’ve been able to properly celebrate her birthday. I want to do something nice for her. And I want it to be something memorable for my first time back on her birthday.”

Nicky noted the subdued tone of her voice and turned to look down at her in concern. “Quynh.”

She dug her fingers into the dough under her hands and her eyes clouded. “I’ve had enough bad memories to last a lifetime, Nicolo.”

He took her floured hands in his own, thumbs rubbing over the backs comfortingly. They’d always gotten along well, he and Quynh. Nicky had often thought that if Joe was the sun and he the moon, then Andy was the vast sky that held them both. And Quynh was the stars. Together, he and Quynh found gentle affection and companionable calm together, like the night's celestial beings shining together. Before that fateful trip to England, they’d often spent time together while their significant others ran amuck doing God-knows-what and getting into troubles that Nicky and Quynh no doubt had to pull them from later. He loved his sister. Seeing her pain was enough to pain him as well.

“I can’t even imagine the horror and torture and fear that you suffered, Quynh.” He acknowledged quietly. “But you are not alone right now. I am here for you and with you.”

“It was all of those things, Nicolo…except for the moment’s id drift off into the blackness of death. I’d think of you all then. I’d wonder if Andromache was alright. If you were looking for me…missing me.”

“We missed you. We looked for you. I wish he hadn’t stopped,” Nicky whispered. “We shouldn’t have stopped.”

Quynh shook her head. “No, _em trai_. I’m glad you did. If I had to drown for five hundred years in an ocean, I would not have you drown in your grief along with me.”

Nicky’s heart broke for her, wishing to do anything to alleviate her traumas. “I feel so helpless. I wish there was something I could do,” he whispered with hoarse honesty.

Quynh reaches dup to place both floured hands on his cheeks. “Every day, every minute that I am with you and Joe and Andy…even Nile, is a day or minute that I am not feeling as if I am back in the depths of the sea, drowning. I lost so much time there. I don’t want to lose any more to it, whether in that coffin or in my own mind. And some days, it feels like I am still there, with the way you all look at me.”

“Whatever you need, sorella, we will do for you.”

“Live life with me, _em trai_. I want to replace every day in that coffin with a day where I love my family and do good and heal. I want 500 years’ worth of birthdays and family dinners and movie nights and chasing bad guys and pranking Joe and getting to know Nile and loving Andromache-” Her list was exhaustive enough that she lost her breath to it.

“Done.” Nicky assured her resolutely. “Four centuries and some change to go.”

“I will count each day, Nicolo. And we will start by finishing this gift for Andy. And I should warn you, em trai, that you have a little flour…well, everywhere.” She gestured to her whole face to illustrate.

Nicky feigned confusion and touched his chin, purposefully smearing it with more flour. “Here?” He patted both cheek bones and brushed at his temples. “Or here? Did I get it all?”

The older woman laughed. “Yes!”

“Well, that makes one of us. Cause you have some here.” And Nicky engulfed her face with a much larger palm, leaving a white handprint that edged into her dark hair. She looked shocked only for a moment before picking up the bowl of flour threateningly.

“Now Quynh” he cautioned, taking a step back. “We only have so much flour and we need it for the baklava.”

“The joke is in you,” she misquoted. “You and I both know how badly I cook. I bought extra in precaution.”

Nicky blanched. “Shit.” He dove for cover behind the counter and thus began a flour war that would forever be immortalized in the family history of memorable food fights. Despite the thick dusting of flour that coated the surface of the kitchen, Nicky was able to assist Quynh in rolling out and layer buttering phyllo between honey-soaked nut mixed layers for baking. He watched her methods carefully, assisting and giving advice as she tried the recipe again. She was insistent that she do most of the work in order for the gift to adequately be from her to Andy.

Upon its completion, Nicky dragged his husband into the kitchen as unwilling test subject. With obvious reluctance, and Quynh’s subtle threats to find her Kiem and force him, he ate a piece.

Both Quynh and Nicky waited as the other man’s eyes widened and he blinked a few times in shock. “Wow, Quynh. I’m…speechless.”

Quynh clapped happily, kissing Nicky’s cheek in thanks for his help and took up the pan to give to her wife.

The two watched her plate the remaining pieces before running from the kitchen. Joe grinned, sidling up to his husband to put an arm around his waist, heedless of the flour that transferred to his clothes.

“It’s awful,” he said through his smile as Quynh bounced impatiently from where she stood at the window, awaiting Nile and Andy’s return.

“I gave her instructions and she still managed to botch it,” Nicky gave her thumbs up in encouragement when the two women approached the door. “You should have seen her first attempt, my love."

“Should we tell her?” Joe asked.

The other man shook his head, sending a cloud of flour into the air. “Nah. I’m not going to be the one responsible for her latest defeat in the kitchen.”

“Andy will never let on, anyhow,” Joe mused with a grin.

Nicky placed a kiss on his cheek before turning to head to their room to shower. “Of course not. After all, it _is_ the thought that counts.”

**Author's Note:**

> sorella (sister)  
> em trai (little brother)
> 
> -my family had an incident like the honey one, except with ketchup. Anyone else been taught to spin your arm in a windmill circle while gripping the bottom of the bottle/container to get the last of the condiment out? Key things to keep in mind: Make sure you ceilings aren't low and the cap is closed LOL. Both have been a detriment to our family in the past. 
> 
> -ive been wanting to branch out and explore between character interactions that are not my default Andy-Quynh, Joe-Nicky, ect, so this was fun.
> 
> -i love baklava. the first time i watched the old guard with my three parentals, my father started laughing when Andy ate the baklava because he had sent me home with a tray last week that i had already eaten before my return that day. 
> 
> -my cooking headcanons: Nicky is the best by far. Joe, Nile, and Booker are pretty good and specialize in certain dishes they can pull off really well. Andy can do the basics and do it adequately for survival. Quynh cant cook or bake worth shit, and the Guard loves her anyway.
> 
> \- you can't involve flour in a story without getting it everywhere. its just not done. 
> 
> \- i love the idea of Quynh messing up modern idioms. My sister, despite english being her first and only language, does it on occasion and it makes me smile every time.


End file.
